A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

So our lectionary occasionally provides us with readings
that stop us short, I find. Our first reading, from the prophet Amos, is a
pretty good example of this. He writes:

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will
send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of
hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north
to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they
shall not find it.

So we hear that, and then someone says at the end of it all,
‘Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church,’ and one is tempted to reply,
‘Sure, if you say so.’

You may remember from last week’s reading from Amos that was
given the gears for prophesying against Israel. Amos himself, oddly enough,
denied being a prophet. ‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but a herdsman
and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock,
and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” ’

Amos prophesies, but he claims to be no prophet. Prophets in
those days were often viewed as mouthpieces of the kings, claiming to provide
God’s blessing on whatever the monarch wished to do; figures like Amos would
have regarded them much as we regard party rags like the old Soviet newspaper
Pravda.

If you were going to be taken seriously as a prophet, you
had to have a reputation for stepping out of line, for being rebellious. From
the perspective of the monarch, prophets like Amos were dangerous – and so they
were, for Amos and others like him pronounced neither comfort nor blessing, but
judgment as the word of the Lord.

The judgment God speaks to Israel through Amos begins with a
darkly comic play on words. God shows Amos a basket of ripe summer fruit, and
then tells Amos, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel’. The play on words is
that the word in Hebrew for ‘summer fruit’ is ‘qayits’, and the word for ‘end’,
‘qets’. Another translation carries on the grim wordplay by opening the
premonition of disaster uttered by God as, ‘The time is ripe for my people
Israel.’

So we get a famine of hearing the word of the Lord; mourning
on the day of the Lord as for an only son; songs being turned into lamentation,
and all of this for what?

Turns out it’s because there are those who are trampling on
the needy, and bringing to ruin the poor of the land; debasing coinage and
falsifying weights and balances; buying and selling the poor and needy into
slavery for a song; and peddling fraudulent merchandise. The people of Israel
were crushing each other in the name of gain.

I don’t know about you, but I think it must have been a lot
easier to be a prophet in Amos’s day. In Amos’s day, it seemed to be easier to
tell when people weren’t doing what they were supposed to: you could check
their scales and measures against accurate ones; you could see when they were
putting their heart into their own gain instead of into building up the
community.

Today when folks crush each other for gain, it’s harder to
see. Ever more complex systems and laws of trade govern the marketplace. Nobody
seems to be responsible when things go south, as with the financial crash of 2008.
Big bank after big bank needed bailing out, in the name of financial stability.

There’s the rub: it seems impossible to sort out what went
wrong, or who was responsible for it. It often seems as though we come across
as fools the moment we open our mouths to say that there’s something wrong with
this whole situation or others like it.

That’s a bit troublesome, because, you see, as the followers
of Jesus, we are called to be prophets, just like Amos, or Jesus, for that
matter. Our ministry as God’s people includes the prophetic calling out of
injustice.

In short, when it comes to the injustice we see around us,
our ministry is to call it like we see it; only thing is, it’s often hard to
know what to look for. Not only that, but no sooner have you stuck your neck
out to say something, someone will be happy to come along and chop it off.
Prophesying against the established way of things isn’t going to win you many
friends. It’s difficult to take the risk of alienating people; usually we want
to play nice.

It’s difficult because we risk losing credibility if we
‘prophesy against Israel’, only we call out the wrong thing. We don’t want to
crash and burn because we called something out only to have others come along
and prove that we were wrong after all.

It’s difficult because we don’t want to come across as
judgmental or intolerant. There are lots of Christians who claim to speak
prophetically in God’s name whose messages we may find downright appalling.

It’s difficult because the social norms and conventions have
changed a lot in the past three thousand years or so since Amos prophesied
against Israel. I don’t know about you, but I don’t pay much attention to guys
standing on street corners haranguing me about stuff.

How are we to find our voice as prophets in this day and
age? How are we going to find the gumption to claim our calling as prophets,
when there are so many compelling reasons not to?

At first glance, Amos’s approach doesn’t appear to lend
itself to our contemporary difficulties in living out our calling as prophets.
If you told most people today that there’s a famine of the word of the Lord in
the land, they’d probably shrug their shoulders and wonder what’s so wrong with
that.

Nor would many people see anything so wrong with asking when
the new moon will be over, so that they may sell grain, nor the sabbath, that
they may offer wheat for sale, or whatever else they please. The days when
folks not observing religious festivals would cause a scandal are over, and it
is open to question whether such days ought to be revived.

It’s easy to lose focus with Amos’s dramatic pronouncements
about the Nile rising and flooding and famines and all that; but at root, he’s
talking about the people’s relationship with God and each other. Amos’s
prophecies have to do with what the lawyer and Jesus bantered about in last
week’s gospel reading, loving the Lord your God with all you are; and loving
your neighbour as yourself.

Amos is talking about how the people’s relationship with God
and neighbour has gone awry. Significantly, however, it is not a relationship
that is coming to an end. The time might be ripe for God’s people Israel – but
they’re still God’s people. God may have sworn not to forget their deeds, but
he does so by the pride of Jacob.

Amos might not have a lot of good to say, in today’s
reading, about the state of the people’s relationship with each other and with
God – but his words testify to God’s concern for God’s people. God desires that
his children treat each other lovingly and justly, and isn’t just going to let
things slide when they don’t.

Interestingly, Jesus’ rebuke to Martha in our gospel passage
is, in its own way, a mild form of the kind of thing Amos has to say. Mary sat
at Jesus’ feet and listened to what he had to say; Martha was distracted by her
many tasks. It’s as if she were saying, ‘when will the new moon be over so I
can get back to tidying the kitchen?’ In her own, quiet, innocuous way, Martha
is experiencing a famine of the word of the Lord, and Jesus gently calls her
out on it: ‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is
need of only one. Mary has chosen the better part.’

Jesus and Amos both called their audiences to reconsider
their relationship with God and neighbour. Through the prophets God recalled
his people to right relationship with each other. God restored his people to
just and loving relationships.

Just as he restored the people of Israel to right
relationships, God restores us to just and loving relationships, too, and one
way in which he does so is by means of prophets. It may be through classical
prophets like Amos. It may be through the words of Jesus, himself reckoned as
quite the prophet.

I think more and more often it will be through the patient,
quiet work of Christians and others who want just and loving relationships to
bring people together. Those who studied Henri Nouwen’s book on spiritual
formation these last few months here at St Albans will know how he discovered
that those whom outsiders account as helpless – the core members of L’Arche
communities – had strength and power to love and to reveal God that he, an
educated and sophisticated priest, psychologist, and professor, did not.

The work of Centre 454, not only to serve their clients but
to share with the world that those whom they serve also possess the strength
and power to love and to reveal God, is also prophetic work.

Sometimes this quiet, patient work needs to be defended by
prophetic words that sound like the kind of stuff Amos said. I remember when it
was first announced that Centre 454 would be coming back to St Albans,
Archdeacon David Selzer had to get shirty with people who were decrying the
move. In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman of legal wrongdoing
in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, one of our own at St Albans, Matthew
Simmermon-Gomes, wrote an ‘open letter to whites’ in which he shared some of
the hurtful experiences he has had to deal with, day-in and day-out, all for
the colour of his skin.

I don’t know what your prophetic ministry is going to look
like – I’m still figuring out mine, for that matter. Maybe you’re living out
this calling already. Maybe you’re going to be doing the kind of patient and
quiet prophesying like they do at Centre 454, like Henri Nouwen, like Jesus
with Martha in our gospel reading. Maybe, like Matthew or Archdeacon David, or
Jesus at other times, you’ll need to speak in your Amos voice.

We’re also continuing to envision and dream how, as a
community, we’re going to live out our prophetic call. We’re already on top of
things with our ongoing and growing relationship with the Centre, and with our
social justice group. We’re learning to use our prophetic voices when we
participate in things like the workshop, held this past May, on diversity led
by the Rev. Eric Law, or the Fill the Hill event about water rights during
Joint Assembly earlier this month.

Whatever your prophetic ministry looks like, know that you
have been given the gift of just and loving relationship with God and
neighbour, and the high calling of reminding others that they, too, have
received that same gift. You may find yourself ‘prophesying against Israel’,
but in the end, whether quietly and patiently, or loudly and brashly, you are
calling others to claim for themselves the gift that is theirs for the taking,
the gift of just and loving relationship with neighbour and God.

2 comments:

Hey (it's Sheer_Craziness from S7S). I read this post, and was interested enough to go check out the whole sermon on St Alban's website. I'm curious: is 15 minutes the standard length of a sermon at your church? I'm impressed that you could fit that much wisdom into such a short time.

The length of sermons varies. Depending on who is preaching, and what he (usually) has to say, usually they range from 12 to 15 minutes (maybe a bit longer, if, as in the case of some sermons, time is included for group discussion).

Thanks for the compliment about wisdom! While I aim to say something wise, I certainly don't imagine that, unaided, I am able to succeed.